


proof

by mostcruel



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Graphic Descriptions of PTSD, Hallucinations, Himring, Implied/Referenced Incest, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Incest, Other, Past Abuse, Past Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape/Non-con Elements, Self-Hatred, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:55:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mostcruel/pseuds/mostcruel
Summary: Maedhros cannot forget Morgoth, and sometimes that means he isn't a good person.
Relationships: Maedhros | Maitimo/Maglor | Makalaurë, Maedhros | Maitimo/Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	proof

Maedhros lifts Maglor off the steps because he can’t concentrate on anything except the feel of where hands have once been on his body, and Maglor was coming down the stairs, and he wanted to touch someone else to still his mind. He lifts him easily because Maglor is light without armour. 

Maglor’s hair falls in soft brushes over Maedhros’s face and obscures his vision. He pushes it down with his chin. Maglor doesn’t protest. He puts his arms around Maedhros, and Maedhros is glad. His vision is cloudy again. He focuses his eyes. He keeps forgetting how. 

Maedhros holds Maglor off the steps, off the floor. The curved staircase retreats up, all made of stone. Everything made of stone. Everything cold. He’s sick of it. Sick of cold. Sick of heat. Sick of feeling anything against his body.

Maedhros feels a hand too large over his hip. It grabs and squeezes hard enough that it could break his bones. It doesn’t. It relents and squeezes gentler. It strokes and caresses at his lap. Maedhros hates how his body responds. The warmth that creeps into his lap. The blood draining from his head. His heart quickening. His throat is dry. 

The hand is not there. It brushes up against his chest. Maedhros drags Maglor closer to keep the hand from reaching him. Maglor squeaks. A little high burst of air from the lungs that Maedhros crushes beneath his rib cage. 

It’s so fucking cold. Cold and the torch beside him is too close, and he moves Maglor away from it because he doesn’t want to hurt him. He could hurt him. He could hurt himself. He knows what pain is. He knows that it doesn’t bother him as much as it should. That’s what happens when you get tortured, right? He had a pan of boiling water fall across his hip and his leg. He didn’t scream. It left a scar for a year. But it didn’t matter. He’s been hurt too much. 

‘Nelyo,’ Maglor says, and it’s a protest now. A squirming protest to get away from his erection, pressed now against Maglor’s leg because the hand that wasn’t there, shouldn’t be there, is there, touching him, and his body responds the way bodies respond, even if he really doesn’t want it to. Even if there is nothing he wants less. 

He shifts Maglor in his arms away from his erection. He knows Maglor is angry. He might be angry at him, but his arms are still around Maedhros’s neck. Maedhros slides his arm underneath his legs and lifts him, cradled, into his arms. He holds him high against his chest. Maglor’s hair drifts over his vision. 

‘You’re beautiful,’ Maedhros says and that’s the wrong to say to your younger brother when you’re holding him in your arms and you’re hard. He knows this, but he says it, because the words fill his mind. And he wants to say it. He wants to. He wants Maglor to know. He wants to hold him for a long time because maybe if he holds him this tightly the hand searching his body will go away. 

It doesn’t.

Not yet. Maedhros moves Maglor away from the torch. He doesn’t know when they drifted closer again. His vision feels fuzzy. He feels dizzy. He won’t faint. He hasn’t fainted in so long. But he’s so weak and he’s so tired and he wants to cut his skin off in long strips and expose his veins and his bones and the beating of his heart and watch it all in the mirror so that he knows he was once real and really alive. And that his body was a body and just a body. That it didn’t know better. Maybe he’ll know that if he can see his heart pumping blood through exposed veins. Maybe then he can forgive it. 

Forgive it for how it responded like bodies respond.

His lips crush against Maglor’s cheekbone. 

‘Beautiful,’ he says. He’s falling backwards but he isn’t falling. The curved staircase seems to go up forever. He wonders if he could carry Maglor to the stars. Maybe then he could find a way to save them. 

‘I want to die,’ he says. He does and he doesn’t. He hates himself. He hates the way his body is still on fire at the touches. 

Morgoth isn’t here, he tells himself. He’ll never touch you again. But still he imagines walking to the table without a chain on him and lying down without being forced to lie down. 

He hates himself for how weak he was. He hates himself for letting it happen. He hates himself for spreading his legs and lying quietly, without bonds, without a gag, without anything actually holding him down. It was just easier than fighting. It was just he got so goddamn fucking lonely. It’s just he was weaker than he had ever imagined. 

And Maglor doesn’t know. Can’t know. He can’t. No one can. He never even dared tell Fingon. Tell Fingon that he let it happen. Tell Fingon that he was so so tired and so so sick of fighting because if he fought it was worse and if he was willing it was better and sometimes, maybe, it could have been nice, if nice was as twisted and sick as his fucked up mind. 

Eru save him he’s fucked in the head. Literally. Figuratively. He’s lying still and there’s a metal comb over his body and he lies still for it even though the teeth ache as they bite his flesh because he knows that somehow there’s always something worse. 

Something worse than Morgoth’s fingers and sharp nails. Something worse. Something worse. Always something worse. 

Something worse than being grabbed by the hair and thrown across the room, skinning knees, skinning hands. Hiding beneath the table is a mistake. It makes it worse because they knock you around getting you out and now you’ve fought, so you have to be punished. 

These are all the things that Maglor cannot know. Cannot know that those fingers don’t leave him. Cannot know that’s why he’s hard. 

Oh god. Oh god. Oh god. 

Because Maglor thinks he’s hard because he’s holding him. Maybe that’s worse. Maedhros doesn’t know. Maglor isn’t protesting. He still has his arms around his neck. 

People are there. People can see them. No one will say a thing. He kisses Maglor’s cheek. Is it an assurance? He can’t tell. He’s terrifying. Sometimes even Maglor is scared of him. 

There are six people there. Six people who can see them. Maedhros didn’t notice them before he grabbed Maglor. He didn’t think about them. He didn’t think about anything because his mind is in pieces and he can’t make his thoughts line up. He cradles Maglor. 

Maglor’s eyes are dark blue and too wide. He shudders softly when Maedhros looks into his eyes. He is scared, but he doesn’t fight. So maybe he would understand. Maedhros cannot tell him. 

Maedhros kisses his cheek again.

‘It’s all right,’ he says. He’s picturing Maglor’s hand bound in an iron cuff impossible to break. His beautiful fingers turning white and then purple as they lose circulation. The iron cutting into his wrist bone. A knife to his wrist. Hand gone. 

He kisses Maglor’s hand. Grabs it hard to his mouth and kisses it. 

‘You’d still find a way to play,’ he says. 

Maglor’s eyes widen. 

Sometimes Maedhros cuts off the circulation to his remaining fingers. He kneels on the floor and he cuts it off until his fingers are swollen and pale, blotted with red and purple. He doesn’t know how to stop himself. It’s something to do. Something to stare at. Like biting his fingers is something to do. Biting his wrist. Watching the marks that he’s made change colours. 

Maybe he could be better if he tried. If he really tried. But he’s been trying for so long now, and he keeps slipping. 

He doesn’t know how much time has passed. How long he’s been holding Maglor here, but there are still six people, and it can’t have been two hours like it’s felt like. He breathes out against Maglor’s cheek. 

Then he starts up the steps that Maglor came down from. He carries him up the winding stone steps. He carries him away from the eyes. No one stops him. 

Maglor doesn’t protest, and he doesn’t fight, and that means he trusts him. But Maedhros never trusted Morgoth. Never trusted any of them. He was just sick of fighting. And that’s the difference. 

He carries Maglor to his room and locks the door behind him and Maglor doesn’t protest, not even once. He just stares at Maedhros with eyes so wide and blue that they could be an entire sky. Maedhros could lose himself in them.

Maybe Maedhros is in love with him. He can’t tell anymore. 

‘What’s wrong?’ Maglor asks. 

Maedhros can’t tell him about the hand that followed them. Just a hand. One hand in the air, reaching and searching for him. He can’t lock it out of his room. He can’t chase it away. 

‘I didn’t want to be alone,’ he says, and that’s not true because he wants to be alone, it’s just he can’t have it. Morgoth is always there. So he needs Maglor to stay with him as a distraction, as a shield, as anything he can make him to keep Morgoth away. 

He checks the lock on the door, but he’s locked Morgoth in with them. All of Morgoth now. Both hands and his terrible eyes. 

He sets Maglor down on the bed. Maglor stares up at him. His eyes are wide. 

‘I...’ he starts but he doesn’t continue. He draws his hand through his hair. ‘Nelyo.’ 

‘I’m not going to rape you,’ Maedhros says, and that’s the wrong thing to say. Because it’s too callous. Because Maglor withdraws when he says it. Because it probably never crossed Maglor’s mind that he might until he said he wouldn’t. 

But Maglor folds his hands on his knee and doesn’t run. He’s understanding like that. He licks his lips. He’s trying to think of what to say, but he doesn’t think of anything. 

Maedhros sits beside him and put his arm around his waist. Maglor stiffens. He plays with his necklace. 

Maedhros watches him. He should say something else, but he doesn’t know what to say now. Once he would have imagined that there was nothing he would never tell Maglor. Now he has so many secrets and they boil inside of him. He kisses Maglor’s ear. He doesn’t know why. He wants to see what he’ll do maybe. Or maybe he wants Maglor to touch him so that Morgoth will stop and he thinks now that Maglor really might. He might. 

He doesn’t. He closes his eyes and folds his arms over his chest. 

‘I’m sorry,’ Maedhros says. ‘I’m fucked up, Kano. I don’t think I’m going to be able to get it away.’ 

Maglor sits still. He doesn’t say anything. 

Maedhros doesn’t let go of him. Maglor doesn’t ask him to. 

Maedhros pecks his clean cheek. 

‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I really am.’ 

‘Of course,’ Maglor says. His voice is strong and it fills up the whole room. It’s another thing Maedhros could lose himself in. If he knew who he was. He doesn’t. So maybe he can’t lose anything, especially not himself. 

Morgoth eyes them. He doesn’t get close now. Maybe Maedhros can chase him away somehow. He draws Maglor closer. He can keep him there and then Morgoth won’t touch him. And maybe he’ll remember how to be a good brother and not some freak that would let anyone, anyone, fuck him if it kept him safe. 

‘Kano,’ he whispers. His hair falls in sweeps over them both. He keeps it long still because he thinks he wants to be beautiful. Maybe. 

Maglor rests his hand on Maedhros’s arm. 

‘I’m cold,’ he says.


End file.
